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Unheralded Victory: The Defeat of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army, 1961-1973

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Along with a half million other young men, Mark Woodruff put his life on the line to serve his country in Vietnam. Like so many others, he returned home to find himself regarded not as a hero but as a humiliating reminder of the only war the United States ever lost.

This Marine, however, is determined to set the record straight. Woodruff never wavers from the cold, hard facts in this riveting book. Battle by battle, Unheralded Victory provides incontrovertible proof that the United States won this war, from the vaunted 1968 Tet Offensive–in reality a shattering defeat that decimated the Viet Cong–to Linebacker II, the final knockout blow that forced North Vietnam to the table.

Make no mistake: our warriors in Vietnam were victorious. It’s time America sat up and took notice.

432 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

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Mark W. Woodruff

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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
11 reviews1 follower
September 28, 2014
A fact-filled read, with detailed descriptions and analysis of a highly mis-characterized war. UV focuses quite a bit on the various military engagements between the US, the VC and later the NVA.

Up until now, my view of the war had been shaped by what I remember from history class in school and Hollywood's portrayals. After completing this eye-opening read, I honestly came away with even more respect for the job the military did in South Vietnam. No other force in history could have come away with the consistent successes the United States (and Australians) did given the extreme restrictions they operated under, not to mention the dis-information being spread back home. Woordruff responds factually and forcefully to all of the common myths and mis-perceptions, effectively resulting in a picture of our military that is far more consistent with what we've seen in every war prior and since.

The reading is a bit on the dry / textbook-ish side, but Woodruff was never out to create a gripping novel.

Highly recommended for those who want to understand what really happened in Vietnam.
Profile Image for Christian Orr.
400 reviews31 followers
July 11, 2019
God bless Mark Woodruff for writing this book and having the guts to tell the full truth about our war effort in Vietnam that the ex-hippie peacenik communist apologists in academia and the “mainstream” media refuse to acknowledge!
Profile Image for Steve Scott.
1,083 reviews51 followers
February 15, 2015
Woodruff cherry picks his data in order to present a sanitized and jingoistic version of the events surrounding the Vietnam war.

Veterans will often try to validate their wars, and this is what Woodruff, himself a Vietnam vet, appears to be doing. He writes how U.S. forces trashed the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong time and again, which is true. It's also irrelevant. Our overall goal was to keep the country independent of communist rule, and within two years of the Paris Peace Accords, North Vietnamese tanks were rolling into Saigon. Woodruff apparently thinks the war ended with our withdrawal and the signing of the accords, and calls it a win for the U.S. He ignores that there was time on the clock and the game wasn't over. Our strategic goals weren't met in the long run (and two years isn't really a long run), and the war was lost. We failed to leave a strong government and military in place, and they weren't able to withstand invasion. Our mission failed.

Woodruff tries to demonize the NVA for their atrocities, for which they deserve anything he dishes out. Yet he does it to justify our involvement there and to give the impression that the United States held the moral high ground…but for the blip of My Lai, to which he devotes a single page. He lambasts their torture of U.S. prisoners without mentioning torture and murder of North Vietnamese troops as reported by U.S. troops who returned from the war. He commits the sin of omission here.

Time and again Woodruff focuses on NVA incompetence in battle, without giving due consideration to U.S. errors that led to needless Amercian casualties. To read this one would think that we were supremely competent in all our actions. That would be the first U.S. war in which that ever happened.

At the end of the book Woodruff devotes a section to those who claimed to have served in Vietnam, but didn't. His purpose here is to demonstrate that American perceptions of the war were skewed by these frauds. He gives twelve examples of men who either claimed to have served in Vietnam, and didn't, or who claimed to have done things in Vietnam that they didn't do. Is he suggesting these twelve had a huge impact on American morale? Or is he stating that frauds like these numbered in the thousands? He implies the former but fails to give evidence for the latter.

One odd thing, I thought. Woodruff tries to downplay the notion that returning U.S. veterans were treated with hostility by other Americans. This was the whole reason for the War On Terror's "Support Our Troops" movement…an attempt to not replicate the experience of what happened in the sixties and seventies with another controversial and unpopular war.

At the end of the book Woodruff tries to dredge up a casus belli (reason for war) by suggesting our involvement there prevented the other countries of Southeast Asia from falling prey to communist aggression. He both dismisses and embraces the "Domino Theory" by writing:

"Those who predicted that the surrounding countries would fall like dominoes were proven wrong, but the world will never know if they might have fallen if America had not acted when it did." Wait…what? Which is it? If it was proven wrong, then the countries surrounding Vietnam wouldn't have fallen. America's involvement was unnecessary if the theory was in fact incorrect. I'm amazed he was able to write a self contradicting sentence and was unable to spot it.

He goes on:

"In 1994, Singapore's President Lee Kwan Yew noted that America's actions in Vietnam had given his country ten years to strengthen itself against the Communists, ten years without which Singapore might well have fallen. One can only speculate on how many other then-vulnerable states could also be added to this list."

Singapore? It's an island lying off the tip of Malaysia. There were three countries between Vietnam and that island. When was Singapore ever threatened with invasion from North Vietnam?

I hoped for more from this book, and Woodruff didn't deliver. This is revisionist history with a clearly biased agenda.
Profile Image for Rowan.
13 reviews2 followers
May 14, 2016
I used to assume that Vietnam was considered an American defeat until I read Woodruff's Unheralded Victory. Now my perception of the war has taken a complete 180 degree turn and then next thing I'll be doing is re-reading other books as a counterweight to my understanding. I can see how its easy to frame Vietnam as an American defeat at a notional level because the Americans withdrew and the NVA entered Saigon. This idea is severely challenged when you read about the numerous battles that took place between the Viet Cong and then the NVA. Woodruff asserts that these battles in totality led to firstly the Viet Cong being defeated followed by the NVA being driven out of South Vietnam. He also claims that these battles when they were reported were often reported as if they were defeats. It begs all sorts of questions, least of all how is victory or defeat defined in a conflict like Vietnam? If it was the South Vietnamese being able to defend themselves against the NVA then how do you withdraw 'victoriously' if the Vietnamization process of the South Vietnamese Army looks slow or pehaps even impossible.
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